


I thought that I heard you laughing

by De_Nugis



Series: confessions [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 03:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel visits Dean</p>
            </blockquote>





	I thought that I heard you laughing

**Author's Note:**

> Timestamp, takes place a few months after choosing my confessions/Last Call.
> 
> Borrows some elements from balder12's remix of choosing my confessions.

Castiel hasn’t spent quite as much time standing outside this house as he once did outside the old one in the place called Cicero, the one Sam had homed in on and turned away from when Castiel released him soulless from the Cage. But he has been here a sufficient number of times. Strange, that he’d never before noticed the rush of water, some distance beneath the pavement. The water is contained in culverts, but it still runs, there out of human sight, with a living voice.

A creek.

The sound carries Castiel across the street and around the corner of the house. Dean’s wife and child and the older boy are elsewhere. Dean himself has not moved since this morning, since he let himself out before light and carried a bottle down to the end of the garden. Not a large bottle. A compromise, perhaps, between the exigency of the day and the thought of the child sleeping upstairs. 

Now it is late afternoon. The other members of Dean’s household have gone about their business without perceiving Castiel or approaching Dean.

Castiel has been so little on earth of late that he loses track of human calendars, but he noted this day. By Dean’s reckoning it is May 2nd. He stands beside the rough wooden chair Dean is sitting in.

“There is a creek,” he says.

Dean looks up dully.

“What?” he says.

“Under the pavement,” says Castiel. “In front of this house. Humans have built over it, but its course has been preserved.”

Dean’s eyes sharpen, as though he is only now truly registering Castiel’s presence.

“What are you doing here, Cas?” he says. “You haven’t come near me since . . . why are you here in my yard, talking to me about some fucking creek?”

“Sam would have found it intriguing,” Castiel explains. “He said so, once.”

Dean half rises, then drops back in his chair.

“Keep Sam the fuck out of it, OK?” he says. “I don’t want to talk about Sam. Go back to creeks. Or better yet, just go.”

“I thought it was customary among humans to speak of the dead,” says Castiel. “To mourn them.” 

For himself he preserves a simpler discipline, telling over the bare names of the angels he has killed, a litany on endless loop in the back of his mind, so accustomed he seldom heeds it. Sam is more difficult. He did not kill Sam.

“Yeah, well,” says Dean. “Guess Sam will have to live without that. Or die without it. Whatever. Because I don’t want to fucking talk about him.” 

“You are angry with him,” says Castiel. He feels surprisingly indignant. He is hardly unaware himself of the injuries Sam Winchester did the world, but he had not thought Dean still held those events against his brother. Certainly not after Sam’s death.

Dean just grunts.

“I also thought it was customary,” says Castiel stiffly, “to forgive the dead.” 

“You really don’t get it, do you?” says Dean. His voice is flat and raw. “I forgave him. For Ruby, Lucifer. The whole shebang. Not sure he really believed it, but I did. But I asked him to stop hunting, Cas. I asked him to stop and he went his own stupid way like he always does and he died. I can’t forgive him for that. Not this time. I can’t forgive him when he’s not fucking here.”

Ah.

“He thought of abandoning the hunt,” says Castiel. Maybe he has something to offer here, something that will comfort Dean, a proof of Sam’s love that won’t break any confidence. “I believe he would have done so, given a little more time. He was researching schools.”

Castiel had never been unduly alarmed by Sam’s rare, explosive rages. He’s never seen that look on Dean’s face, though. 

“Don’t. Say. That.” Dean shouts, “Jesus.” His voice breaks off. “Don’t say that,” he repeats in a whisper. 

He reaches for the bottle on the arm of his chair but his hand is shaking and the bottle topples over, spills in the grass. Dean makes no move to retrieve it. Castiel watches the whisky seep into the soil, through the delicate networks of pallid roots. Grains shift and sag, blocking one tunnel of an anthill. Fortunately little was left in the bottle. Only six ants drown. Castiel could bring them back, if he wished. Death would not hold him to the terms of their contract, not in a matter of ants. But there would be little point.

Dean is watching, too, though he cannot see very far.

“Damn you, Sammy,” he says to the grass. “God fucking damn you.” He bends down, sets the bottle carefully upright.

Castiel maintains his silence. Surely that will be better. In any case, Dean wasn’t addressing him. Dean’s breath shudders in and out. He stares at the fence for a space of time, jaw working. No writing appears on the white boards. Then he sighs, once, and stands up.

“Stay to dinner, Cas,” he says, and his voice is placatory now, almost pleading. “You haven’t met Sally. Stay to dinner and tell her embarrassing stories about her goddamned fucker of an uncle.”

Castiel recalls one of the occasions when Sam had called him, one of the occasions Sam had need of him. The chair in the cheap lodging Sam had chosen was a design unfamiliar to Castiel. But he had grown accustomed to working such things out, even a little proud of his skill. He had wound the rope round the chair’s legs, run a loop for good measure around a convenient metal strut, then drawn back in surprise as the lower section of the chair had kicked out while the backrest crashed back, taking Sam with it, until the surface was almost horizontal. 

So humans designed chairs whose trueforms were beds. Ingenious.

He had been afraid Sam might be injured. It had taken him a moment to realize that the noises Sam was making were laughter.

“Rules to live by,” Sam had said at last. “Never take a joint from a guy named Don, never do bondage in a Barca lounger.”

Castiel had offered to continue – now that the mechanism was fully extended he judged there would be no further alterations in the chair’s structure -- but Sam had waved him off, set about untying the knots.

“It’s OK, Cas,” he’d said, “I think we killed the mood,” but he’d been grinning, as relaxed as Castiel ever saw him, the thrum of tension stilled. They’d gone to a movie, in the end. Castiel had found the plot implausible. The people in it drove irresponsibly. Dean would be very angry, if Sam were to treat his car that way. Maybe the fantasy of reckless vehicular destruction was cathartic for Sam.

It had not been what Castiel had planned, but it had proved effective.

Castiel is unsure what brought that incident to his memory. He knows little about human child-rearing, but he suspects Dean would consider the anecdote inappropriate for his daughter. And Sam would consider it inappropriate for Dean. Still, Cas feels the tug of a smile on his lips, and Dean answers with the ghost of his grin. His eyes are red-rimmed, but no longer furious. There’s hunger in them now. He wants Castiel. He wants Castiel to stay and talk about Sam.

Dean needs him.

“Thank you,” says Castiel. “I would like that.”


End file.
